The Negotiator (23 page)

She wandered through the aisles to the back of the store and the glass door freezers and took her time considering options. She bought strawberry ice cream and added a box of plastic spoons. It was fun doing this for a day instead of working. She didn’t goof off nearly enough.

“Give me the twenty.”

This wasn’t happening. She felt the knife tip prick her ribs from behind at the same instant her peripheral vision caught the stockroom door swinging back the other way and saw in the small pane of glass the kid who had made the threat. It was a teen, barely fifteen, sweating—she could smell the desperation. Clearly the crack problem was as bad in Wisconsin as it was in her Chicago neighborhood; she’d seen that look of desperation too many times. He’d stepped out of the stockroom and was probably planning to retreat the same way.

She shifted the twenty dollars from the palm of her hand to between her middle fingers, extending it to him without saying a word. What a mess. It wasn’t even her twenty bucks. And he was going to use it to get high.

He grabbed the bill, stepped back, and she turned and rammed the open flat of her hand under his nose. If she broke his nose it was incidental, she just wanted to guarantee he dropped the knife. If he used the knife once, he would use it again, next time on someone he might hurt. The teen howled, the knife dropped, and the boy made the mistake of reaching down for it. She hooked a foot behind his and put him on his back.

Dave laid a cautious hand on her shoulder, and she about hit him, too. He had seen enough to get the drift. “I’ve got him, Kate.”

She stepped back while he hauled the teen to his feet.

“Buy a box of plastic sandwich bags and get that knife in evidence. You ever testify in the Wisconsin courts?”

“Once.”

“Fastest courts for juvenile cases I’ve ever seen.” He looked her over. “You just couldn’t take a day off, could you?”

It was said with humor, and she let herself smile in return even though what she wanted to do was hit something to get rid of the fright. “If I were working today, I would have wasted time trying to convince him he really didn’t want the twenty bucks before I just took the knife away.”

Dave laughed. He got a good hold of the back of the boy’s collar and steered him toward the front of the store. “Okay, son. Lesson one. Next time, you really don’t want to try and rob a cop.”

By the time the local cops had taken statements, reports had been filed, and they were officially free to go, it was almost 5
P.M.
Dave slid the paperwork into the bike satchel, glanced over at her, and straightened. “What?”

“I’m sorry about all this.”

“Why? You didn’t cause it.”

“I was looking forward to a day off.”

“The sun hasn’t set yet, has it?”

“No.”

“Then give me a chance to get creative here. I’d like to think I could make some of this up to you.”

“Make it up to me?”

He nodded and handed her the jacket. “I chose the place to stop, remember?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“What do you think about ostentatious displays of wealth?”

“What?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Tacky.”

“I figured that would be your answer.” A long stretch limousine tried to maneuver into the parking lot never designed for a car of its length. “So I asked for your basic black instead of your more flashy white.”

“You did what—”

She had to laugh as he walked over and held open the limousine door. “Two hours on a bike when you’re tired is not fun. Kevin volunteered to drive the bike home. We’ll make the trip in a little more comfort.”

Kate vaguely remembered Kevin when he got out of the passenger front seat as one of the men who did landscape work for Dave. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“Two phone calls. The second was for the order of Chinese take-out. I believe someone mentioned you like wontons?”

“I’m sold.” She slid into the back seat of the limousine and felt her body sink into the plush leather. The car was huge. With the facing seat it would allow four people to travel in comfort with their legs stretched out. Dave joined her.

“This is really ridiculous. Do you know what my family will say when they hear how I got home?”

“Don’t tell them.” Dave made himself comfortable as the car pulled out of the parking lot. “It’s got a T V, too. We’ve got food, entertainment, tinted windows. I’d call it a date, but you’re still in jeans.”

She was too amused by how pleased he looked with himself to do anything but laugh. They were stuck in traffic for an extra hour during the drive home. It was the first time she had never cared.

“Canceled checks confirmed what we suspected. Nathan was apparently blackmailing Tony. One hundred and eighty thousand was paid to the fictional subcontractor, and it all ended up in Nathan’s private account. Whatever Nathan knew, Tony was willing to pay handsomely to keep it quiet. Do we have any idea what it was?” Dave asked, looking around the table. The group had reassembled early Monday morning, picking up where they had left off in the work; already the first pot of coffee was gone, and they were well into the second.

“I still think it’s drug related,” Jack offered, looking at the Post-it notes. “We know Tony was fired from O’Hare under the suspicion that he was moving drugs. Eight of his coworkers went to jail, but the cops didn’t have enough evidence to charge Tony. What if Nathan had that evidence?”

“Assuming it exists—how would Nathan have acquired it? Do we have any indication Nathan was involved in drug activities?”

“Nathan—no, but his brother Ashcroft? According to this—” Kate tapped the Ashcroft trial transcript binder on her lap before reaching over for another doughnut—“we know Ashcroft once moved drugs through O’Hare. What if Tony worked for Ashcroft and there was proof of that, could Nathan have gotten hold of it?”

“Ashcroft went to jail for a decade. Someone had to store his stuff, settle his affairs. It would have fallen to Nathan,” Graham offered. “A notebook, a tape, it’s possible.”

“Tony Jr. didn’t start to work at O’Hare until after Ashcroft went to jail,” Marcus cautioned, looking at the easel sheet with the master timeline.

“Ashcroft could have continued to run his business from inside prison,” Graham offered.

“So in order to explain Nathan’s blackmail, we need to find a link between Tony Jr. and Ashcroft,” Dave proposed, glancing around the table.

Marcus nodded. “Yes.”

“This is like looking for a needle in a sprawling haystack,” Susan commented, opening a box they had yet to go through. “Dave, which do you want? Tony’s O’Hare personnel records or the investigative notes for the charges that weren’t filed?”

“Personnel records.”

The room was quiet but for the turning of pages.

“Marcus, didn’t you say Tony’s wife was named Marla?” Susan asked.

“Yes.”

“She also worked at O’Hare in the baggage department, the same time as Tony. They must have met there.”

“Really? Anything in the cops’ investigation about her?”

Susan checked the records. “No.”

“The background check we did showed only two parking tickets for her, nothing else, so I guess that’s not surprising.”

“Found it.” Dave pulled out three blue pieces of paper. “Guess who wrote a recommendation for Tony to work at O’Hare? None other than Ashcroft Young.”

“You’re kidding.” Kate reached for the pages Dave offered.

“Didn’t they bother to check who his references were from?” Graham asked, astounded.

Dave tapped the top of the sheet.
“Business owner.
Isn’t that novel?”

Marcus looked at the timeline. “Ashcroft made the recommendation from jail?”

“Bold fellow, isn’t he?” Dave checked the dates. “He would have been three years into his ten-year sentence.”

“So he was trying to run his operation from jail.” Marcus said.

“Yes.”

“That explains the what of the blackmail. Tony worked for Ashcroft moving drugs, and somehow Nathan learned about it,” Lisa concluded.

“It’s a reasonable hunch. So where’s the evidence now? Nathan’s dead. At Nathan’s home? His office? Tucked away somewhere never to be found?” Graham wanted to know.

“It’s going to be rather hard to get a search warrant for a victim’s home with what we’ve got,” Dave remarked.

“We can put cars watching both places. If the evidence exists, Tony may try to retrieve and destroy it,” Susan suggested.

“Good idea.” Ben reached for the phone.

Kate got up to pace the room. “Is it worth killing for? Even if convicted, Tony was looking at what—ten years in jail, out on parole in seven? A decent plea bargain, he’s out in five. Why pay almost two hundred thousand and then commit murder to stop that kind of possible conviction?”

Marcus shook his head. “It doesn’t add up.”

“Exactly. We’re missing something. Something big. We just scooped up a little minnow, and a catfish is still lurking in this muck.”

“Of all the…” Kate nearly exploded out of her chair a short time later.

Everyone around the table looked up. “What?” Dave asked, speaking for all of them.

She looked at the trial binder as if it would strike out and bite her. “Ashcroft went to jail for a decade for distributing cocaine. Would you like to guess who his partner was?”

Dave could see the anger in her eyes, glowing hot.

“Tony Emerson Sr.” She bit out tersely.

“Your father was dealing drugs?” Dave said slowly.

“He cut a deal with the DA; he got five years’ suspended time and three years’ probation for testifying against Ashcroft. The judge apparently tossed part of the search warrant evidence against him on a technicality, and the DA decided that his testimony against Ashcroft was worth the deal. I don’t believe this. Talk about a pot calling the kettle black. They should have put him in jail and thrown away the key.”

Stephen offered a slight whistle. “Ashcroft would have been out for Tony Sr.’s blood.”

“Put someone in jail for ten years, yeah, he’d hold a grudge. Tony Sr. was lucky; he died in a car accident while Ashcroft was still in jail,” Kate concluded.

“Anything suspicious about the accident?” Dave asked.

“He was driving drunk, and he put his car into the side of a tree.”

Dave nodded. “It’s an interesting link. Does it tell us anything?”

“Just personal family history,” Kate replied grimly.

Dave dug his fingers into the back of his neck. Kate didn’t look surprised her father had been mixed up in dealing drugs. It was a hard image of her past.

“Do you want me to finish the transcript?” he asked, not sure how to deal with the anger, justified anger, she was feeling.

“No.” She pulled her chair back to the table with a sigh. “I’ve got it.”

Twenty minutes later he saw her sit up straighter and pull the trial binder toward her. “Now this is interesting.…”

“Got something?”

“Yeah. Ashcroft’s bank accounts were frozen—pretty standard stuff, but the guy who originally fingered the accounts and actually triggered the entire investigation? It was Nathan.”

“Nathan turned his brother in as a suspected drug dealer?” Dave asked.

Kate nodded. “He sent a letter to the DEA showing a list of suspicious deposits into one of his brother’s accounts. It’s what triggered the investigation that eventually sent Ashcroft to jail. Tony Sr.’s testimony was used so they could raise the charges to cocaine distribution, not just money laundering.”

“So Nathan is into blackmail but won’t touch drug money.”

“Protecting his banks?” Lisa asked.

“Or kicking his brother where it hurts,” Marcus remarked.

It was shortly after 5
P.M.
when the last of the folders were closed.

“So what do we think happened?” Lisa asked finally, looking around the room. Dave could tell no one wanted to say what was clear to all of them.

Marcus looked over at Kate, his expression one of quiet sympathy. “Tony Jr. was being blackmailed, forced out of business. That’s motive. He used explosives from his own company. He met Nathan at the airport and was able to plant the bomb. That’s means and opportunity. Tony Jr. thought Nathan would be taking the private jet, he never intended to kill all those people. That removes the overkill. He’s disappeared, not normally the act of an innocent man. That’s what the evidence suggests. It may be wrong, but that’s what is here. The feud between Ashcroft and his brother is also there, but I think it’s unrelated to the events that happened on Tuesday—it was an ongoing family feud, and they are both dead. It’s Tony.”

Dave listened to him quietly summarize what would go to the DA and knew the case was there. There were still problems. How Tony Jr. knew what type of laptop Nathan carried. Why he had placed the calls to the tower if his intended target was a private jet. But the case was there. He watched Kate drop her head into her hands. She had to hate this job about now.

He kept hoping something would break in her favor, and yet every day that passed, the situation just got worse for Tony Emerson Jr. and therefore her. How long before the stress she was under broke her? She didn’t have God to lean on. She was trying to get through this on her own strength, and he knew it couldn’t be done.

Dave just hoped she didn’t push him away before that crunch time came. He needed to be there for her. It was the one point in time her need for the gospel might overcome her resistance to it.

Lord, please, help her yield. She needs You. She’s just too stubborn to realize it. It’s breaking my heart to watch her go through this and know I haven’t been able to reach her with the gospel. What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I get her to listen?

Dave looked over at Kate as she wearily ran her hands through her hair and then began packing away the files in front of her, and he suddenly realized just how badly he had handled the entire problem of faith.

He had been pushing too hard.

He had seen so much emotion in Kate during the last few days he had assumed her decision about God would be an emotional one. It wouldn’t be. That wasn’t Kate. It would be a decision made with her heart
and
her head. Rather than give her the time she needed to ask questions at her own pace, he had been pressing for the decision.
“Put God at the center of your life.”
It had been the totally wrong way to handle that moment of vulnerability on her part, and he had lost an opportunity to simply tell her God cared.